Exploitation films

Baron Blood

A resurrected torturer stalks his own castle. Bava on more commercial autopilot, still gorgeous.

Cemetery Without Crosses

The French corner of the spaghetti cycle: gaunt, ritualistic, and dedicated to Leone.

Lisa and the Devil

Bava's most personal film, and his strangest. Telly Savalas as the devil, holding a lollipop.

Maciste in Hell

A muscleman drops into a full gothic hell. Peplum crossbred with a haunted-castle picture, and it looks it.

The Boss

Di Leo's most cynical crime film. A mob enforcer navigates a Mafia war where everyone is corrupt.

The Grand Duel

Lee Van Cleef, one three-way showdown, and the Bacalov theme you know from Kill Bill.

The Italian Connection

Mario Adorf on foot versus a car. Best chase in Italian cinema.

Women's Prison Massacre

Late Italian entry. Laura Gemser, and a body count instead of a plot.

99 Women

Franco doing the formula early, with Mercedes McCambridge as the warden.

Contamination

Alien via Rome, with exploding chests and a Goblin score doing heavy lifting.

Flavia the Heretic

Far angrier and more political than the packaging suggests.

Goliath and the Vampires

Maciste renamed again, fighting a shapeshifter. Cheerfully incoherent.

Goodbye Uncle Tom

Jacopetti and Prosperi's slavery reconstruction, and the most indefensible thing the mondo pair ever shot.

Hell of the Living Dead

Bruno Mattei rips off Dawn of the Dead with a Goblin score he also stole. Gloriously shameless.

Kill, Baby... Kill!

A ghost child with a white ball. Fellini and Scorsese both stole from it.

Revolver

Di Leo's saddest. Oliver Reed, and a Morricone theme that hurts.

Short Night of Glass Dolls

Narrated by a paralysed man presumed dead. Unusual and very good.

The Case of the Scorpion's Tail

Martino at his most efficient. Nobody wastes a frame.

The Gestapo's Last Orgy

The most extreme of the sadiconazista cycle, and the only one shaped like a love story.

The Horrible Dr. Hichcock

Barbara Steele married to a necrophile surgeon, and Freda smuggling it past the 1962 censors on innuendo alone.

The House on the Edge of the Park

Deodato points Last House at a dinner party. Grubby, mean, effective.

Castle of Blood

Barbara Steele in a haunted house on a bet. Better than it sounds.

Four of the Apocalypse

Fulci does a bleak, hallucinatory western. Four outcasts cross a hostile frontier. Most do not make it.

Hatchet for the Honeymoon

A bridal-couture killer who narrates his own psychosis, and the best ghost gag Bava ever staged.

Killer Nun

Anita Ekberg, morphine, and a plot that gives up around the hour mark.

Operation Kid Brother

They cast Sean Connery's actual brother. That is the entire idea.

The Black Belly of the Tarantula

The killer paralyses you first so you feel it. A first-rank giallo nobody name-checks.

The Red Queen Kills Seven Times

A family curse, a killer in a red cloak, and a legend that kills every hundred years.

Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key

Best title in the genre. Poe adaptation with Edwige Fenech and a black cat.

Django Kill... If You Live, Shoot!

Nothing to do with Django, and one of the strangest and cruelest westerns Italy ever shot.

Escape from the Bronx

More of the same, with flamethrowers and property developers as villains.

Jungle Holocaust

Deodato's first pass. Slower, meaner, less interesting than what followed.

OSS 117: Mission for a Killer

The eurospy archetype, from a French agent who beat James Bond into print by four years.

The New Barbarians

Castellari's Mad Max, with perspex cars and George Eastman. Sold in the US as Warriors of the Wasteland.

The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh

The Martino/Fenech formula, arriving fully formed. Cut and retitled Blade of the Ripper in the US.

Yor, the Hunter from the Future

Starts as caveman fantasy, becomes science fiction with no warning.